Kelly, Luther Sage

A frontiersman born in New Jersey, Kelly served in the Union Army during the Civil War. A guide, scout, and hunter in the Yellowstone River Valley region in the late 1860s and 1870s in Montana. His original hand drawn map of the Yellowstone Valley in 1878 is in the collections of the Public Library. Chief of Scouts for General Nelson Miles from 1876 to 1878 serving at Wolf Mountain (Pyramid Butte) and Tongue River battles. He guided expeditions in Alaska and served as a captain of volunteers in the Philippines. He was an agent on the San Carlos Indian Reservation and retired in California where he died in December 1928. Kelly asked, in his will, to be buried in Montana. He was buried at what is now known as Kelly Mountain in Sword's Rimrock Park, Billings. See his autobiography, Yellowstone Kelly: The Memoirs of Luther S. Kelly, and the new book, Life of Yellowstone Kelly by Jerry Keenan.